The turn-around in the market isn’t a good thing, but at least I no longer have to wrack my brain over new ways to describe an exuberant market. Layoffs, offers rescinded, hiring paused/frozen – it’s all happening now. This Yahoo Finance article mentions many of the top tech firms that have paused hiring or are laying people off. And Wall Street is expected to follow after two years of aggressive hiring. Some banks have already instituted freezes or at least scaled hiring plans way back. By the end of the summer our investment bank clients will likely be frozen for the year, a familiar cycle, but not something we have seen the past 2 years.
Total number of IT jobs posted by Investment Banks, New York area, by date
What will happen with salaries? Everyone leveled up over the past couple of years. Junior/mid/senior – those who took advantage of this market are making substantially more than just a couple of years ago. And salaries will remain higher. After all, you can’t hire the new person at less than their peer who was hired six months ago. People do talk. That said, there will be stiffer competition for high-paying jobs, and inflated offers from hot IPO firms like Coinbase are gone for now. With Meta and its peers trading up to 60% off their highs, all cash packages are suddenly a lot more competitive with RSU laden offers from tech firms that have a high face value but feel riskier.
Hedge funds will be winners over the next few months. Market volatility is good for these firms, and top people will rotate back to them as they continue to staff up their systematic trading teams.
Hybrid
We now officially live in a hybrid work world. There is no going back. Sure, some firms and functions remain office bound 5 days a week (Citadel). But remote work is all about leverage, and talented technical people will retain leverage over their employers for the foreseeable future. Credit Suisse’s CEO has it exactly right, “It’s unrealistic and it is not what employees want…it’s counterproductive if you push too hard.”
People ask me all the time what a prospective employer’s policy is for hybrid/remote work. The fact of the matter is that it’s not really about policy as noted above. I found this NY Times article very insightful: The Rules for Hybrid Work Were Always Made Up. One take-away from the article, “People are way too fixated on number of days in office as a metric. The office has to earn its place in the average person’s week.”
Miami
First Shaq, now Ken Griffin. Citadel’s move to Miami will accelerate the industry’s movement south that began in earnest at the beginning of Covid. An impressive list of firms that have established offices in Miami. Lower taxes have paved the way. Yes, these firms are hiring developers and quants in Miami too – call me :).
Good Old C++
What does every hedge fund want more than anything else? Answer: C++ developers. We are seeing unprecedented demand for C++ engineers broadly across our hedge fund clients. It’s the popular (and safe) choice for systematic trading systems across the industry. While python continues to grow in popularity (Go too), the demand for C++ developers is driving compensation up particularly sharply for C++ experts.
Current Priorities
FinTech
Most in Demand: Distributed Systems/Micro Services, Data Engineering, Javascript
Consumer Credit Risk/Fraud Technical Lead – well-funded Fintech startup
BlockChain Platform Developer – language agnostic, prior BlockChain experience not required
BlockChain Developer – Haskell (first Haskell job!)
Java/Scala Engineer for fixed income eTrading platform
BlockChain Developer – mix of Python/node.js/C++ - small, cutting-edge Andreesen funded startup
Data Engineer - Python, Go, Postgres, Kafka
Data Engineer – Trade Execution – Python, Java, GoLang
C# Engineer – Trading Platform
Buy Side
Most in Demand: C++, Python, Data Engineering, Cloud, Front-end Javascript/Typescript
Low-latency Engineer with Equity Trade Execution experience – C++
Senior Engineer for algo systems development – C++
Electronic Trading Engineer – Fixed Income – C++
Algo Execution Services - C++
PM Tactical delivery - C# Developer
Dev/DevOps – small fund (significant backing) seeks all-around developer – Summit NJ
Quant Academy – Quant Rotational program
Data Scientist – Data Science Team
Trade Flow Developer – KDB+
Research Platform Developer – Machine Learning expertise – Python
Research Platform Developer – Equity Alpha Research – C++/Python
Trade Support – SRE
Team Lead - Trade Support – SRE/DevOps
Quantitative Developer – C++/Python
Front Office Engineer – C++
Developer - Portfolio Manager API - Java
Senior Software Engineer – Treasury - Java – NYC or Miami
Lead Software Engineer – Crossing Platform – low-latency C++
Senior Software Engineer – Accounting and Valuation Technology – Java – NYC or Miami
QuantDev – Central Research Technology – Python/C++
Data Engineer – Javascript/Typescript, React
Low latency C++ Engineer – Market making systems
Quantitative Researcher – Alpha research
Quantitative Developer – Java or C++, Python
Software Engineer – Execution Engineering – C++
Sell Side
Most in Demand: Java, Data Engineering, Cloud – Diversity
Lead Developer/Dev Manager – Futures Trading – Java
Java Developer – Futures Trading
Lead Developer/Dev Manager – Market Risk IT - Java
Rates Electronic Trading Engineer - Java
Cloud Architect – Hands-on Java, Azure
Java Developer – Fixed Income Trading
Java Developer – Semantic and Graph Technologies
Java/Scala Developer – Securitized Lending
Senior Java Developer/Cloud Architect
Above list is fairly dynamic these days as banks sort out their hiring priorities for the rest of the year.